f13.net

Keke. Ask your questions. You might get answers. You might not. I demand participation.

Does the passage I quoted in the other thread really mean that everyone has to constantly jump around like a BF2 dolphin diver monkey on meth?  :-)

If you are a shield class you can hit the shift key and block instead.

Is it a bad sign that there's a thread up entitled "Anyone still playing?" ?

Well....here's the biggest con I have for the game.

Seems short.

I remember someone thinking it would not be worth a monthly fee and someone else in the beta responding with a  :nda:, is there a monthly fee or are they doing something like guild wars?

And do you have a better idea on what the real release date is?

Monthly fee yes. How much? Don't know. I'll take a guess and say $14.95.

According to Gamestop the box will be $50. There's a special edition in their computers.

Release date is 2/28/06.

Serious question: Can comments made while under NDA be publicized after the NDA is lifted? I was under the impression they could not.

You mean like our EQ2 forum or our CoH Forum or our Guild Wars forum which all had the same type of NDA as this DDO forum?

Once the NDA is lifted, you can say whatever you want.  Including repeating thoughts that you had while the NDA was still in effect.  So it wouldn't make much sense to restrict things said while under the NDA, since you could always just say them again anyway.   At least, that's how I reckon it.

ROCK.

I'll trade you a wheat and sheep for a rock.

I'm still going with:

1.  This game is not worth a monthly fee, it would do much better then GuildWars has with this community if it was free though since the gameplay screams for organized short runs then logging off.  Where GW's pvp endgame (while awesome) is very time consuming as it is with all competitive pvp.

2.  This game will annoy those who do not suffer from the disease known as altitus or whatever we call it these days.  Unless there are literally SOO many newbie quests you have no hope to complete all of them, but then it will still suck.  Because most players will not want to take on an inferior xp/time grind just to see new content even if that would be more fun.  People are broken and stuff.

3.  The game doesn't look nice (in the way so many have gotten used to WoW's visuals) and it doesn't look like it is ready to release, it reminds me much more of the EQ "style" which is to say almost no style at all.  Broken group chat, attacking npc's with no response, arrows gfx sitting in mid air and invincible boxes?  mmmm beta (note: nothing has ever been fixed in a MMO beta, ever)

4.  The combat while decent systemically (wonder if that was a real word) -talking melee here-  looks stupid.  This is a mistake people like for the thing they will spend 90% of their game time doing to not look stupid.  Also without trying it myself I couldn't tell if there was any improvement over WoW's melee combat, just even faster and more mouse clicks!  Thoughts on this?

5.  I hate Mondays.

I will probably right up a bunch of thoughts, but basically I agree with what you said. Compared to other MMORPG combat it's not really any better or different, it's not an action game in the same way Zelda is.

Most people don't.

If you're a sturdy tanky fighter sort of character (with a shield and so forth), you're better off blocking with that shield than tumbling around like a monkey on meth.

Tumbling around like a monkey on meth does help you evade damage if you don't have a shield, but also makes it tough to dish it out; some people seem to have trouble just staying more or less facing their target even when they're holding still, much less timing a tumble to dodge a swing but still end up in a good spot to return the attack.  

I tend to spend a lot of time tumbling about if I'm playing as a rogue (potentially high damage output but can't take a punch very well) and I've gotten too much attention from the baddies; then I focus on tumbling about and avoiding damage while the fighters get free hits on the thing that's chasing me around.

Haemish is pretty spot-on as far as I'm concerned about DDO. You can read some of the gold here. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5581.msg147496#msg147496)

This is the first time I've paid attention to such a transition. Call me chronologically impaired. Samwise answered it. All I needed.

I believe Turbine has stated there are 130 quests at launch.   Players report you have to repeat each 3-10 times (reports vary) to hit L10, if you care about hitting L10.

This is not quite believeable. To min/max I can see doing a good handful of them twice, three times even - doing every single one 3-10 times to hit L10 is total exaggeration. Also quests in DDO are fully realized things. It's not like it's a fedex quest that you get from a bulletin board. When they say 130 quests, they mean 130 QUESTS.

Soloers, seek your enjoyment elsewhere. DDO is a game for groups.

Don't expect to be Garrett, rogues are pretty much forced into combat occasionally.

The above limited me from seeing anything cool in the game. That's pretty much all I got out of the game, and I was supposed to be testing it the longest.

It would make an ok game if they weren't trying to charge a fee for what's really a non-massive game with game matching. Not that it would be perfect even then. When pay to play games showed up, they offered something that non-massive games couldn't offer. And that experienced required a large and expensive server infrastructure. DDO doesn't offer anything you couldn't get on a LAN and there's just no reason for the cost.

Are you saying it's a glorified NWN module? Cuz I've played NWN and DDO and I wouldn't go there.

So.... meh?

Even if players find that out after week 2, Turbine will still recoup on initial box sales, no?   

Personally, I think this game has a lot of potential to draw DnD fans in. Personally, I'd rather play DnD, but that's mostly because I know I'll never be in a good DnD group again. But the grouping and mission structure, well, if you had 2-3 friends who you could game with 1-2 nights a week and play the quests together, it would be a pretty goddamn fun game. I know I couldn't do it if even once I had to group with some guy I didn't know. The game would ask too much of unwilling cooperation.

Give me Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk and I would be a lot more interested in this game than I am currently.

agree

I'll try it out for the sake of keeping up, but I'm a soloer so I doubt I'll stay.  Isn't it funny how many games rely on that dependency of "already-knowing-reliable-people-to-play-with" to reach their end game?  Somedays I just want to read a book.  I can always win at that.



agree

I cleaned out the storage unit this weekend and boxes on boxes of Undermountain, Shadowvale, all sorts of Faerun content was there.  I  :heart:  Baldur's Gate franchise, really did. 

No, it's not a glorified NWN module, but what does it offer that NWN doesn't?  While I enjoyed the time I putzed around with it, I certainly don't think it's worth $15 a month, and I have friends I could get together on a regular basis to play. 

Then there's also that it's not going to grab your average MMO player for the reasons listed in the preview thread. No leet loot, no raid content, no 'endgame.'  Like it or not, that's what your MMO-playing RPGer wants because that's what's been standard for the last 7 years.  Any game that's going to change that will be starting small and grow large over time.

Then tack-on that, Yes, most older D&D Players prefer Greyhawk and ones slightly younger than them prefer Forgotten Realms.  How has Ebberon been catching on in the D&D community? Is it? I dunno, but it's not a world I'm interested in investigating and probably not most D&D players who aren't REALLY into D&D.   I understand WOTC's  desire to promoste it because then they don't have to pay royalties to the past 25 years of authors who still have the rights to those worlds. It's just not going to attract old players, though.

This could be a nice, niche game that can go a long time but I don't think that's what WOTC is looking for.

Can't blame Turbine. They didn't shoot the moon and DDO turned out fine. If WoTC wants to challenge Blizzard in any way, it's going to involve MtG.

More to the point it's going to involve finding new ways to milk MtG players through micropayments.  I'd stay the fuck away from any MMO with MtG on the box simply for the fact that they'll find ways to make it so the people who spend the most money have an advantage.

I've only played 2 days, so hopefully these things will change, but add me to the Greyhawk 4 lyfe crew.  Maybe I could get into the setting if (a) the game didn't look so boring graphically (b) the most obvious new thing about the setting, warforged characters, didn't stand out as exceptionally boring graphically even against the backdrop of a graphically boring world, and (c) the most obvious new thing about the setting, warforged characters, weren't such a goddamn pain in the ass game-mechanics wise (esp the healing issue).  

I hope the dungeons get a shitload better, because at level 2 every dungeon I've seen looks like modular, randomly-thrown-together chunks of garbage left over from EQ's Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion.  Is there anywhere that feels like Guk or Blackrock Depths?  Pls!

I'll play for a while, because I am a min-maxing whore and this game appears to be all about being a min-maxing whore (seriously, an insanely baroque skill/feat system and no respec is a level of stupidity I didn't even think Turbine had in them after watching it blow up in their faces in AC1).

When is NWN2 supposed to come out?

Um.

This game sounds ass.

Really.

No, I'm saying it's not MMP. The entire game consists of a small group in a totally private setting. You could just as easily host it on a lan or through non-fee game matching. Multiplayer, but not massively multiplayer. In fact, far fewer people on a playfield than most first person shooters.

Though honestly, it's more of what I'd expected NWN to be. I found NWN to be a major disappointment.

Well, in their defense Turbine didn't have any leeway here.  The system IS 3.5 D&D, with all of it's flaws (and glory).  Great for P&P where your DM can tweak things, or a single player game where you can say 'fuck this guy sucks' and cheat him or reroll and quickly get back to where you were.  For a MMO? Yeah, not the best system.

The art.. yeah I have a whole 3-4 paragraph rant in me about that.  Again, not something I can blame Turbine specifically for.  I'll get to it later tonight when I'm home and can compose my thoughts better.

But D&D has respecs.

From the Expanded Psionic's Handbook:


Edited for brevity and so I'm not totally  violating copyright, but there it is... it's not like there's no precedent for respeccing in D&D.  How hard would it be to tweak those rules a bit to make it work in a MMOG?  Maybe there's  a psion/wizard NPC who is willing to do this task, but demands payment to make up for his own XP loss.   Maybe he's willing to perform the Reformation on you if you go obtain an extremely valuable gem from the Grand Kobold Kolossus Killificus.

We are not men. 

We are Devo.


I'm sure I'll buy the game, probably just to run a quest or three during the average week--my PnP group only meets once a week and that's not nearly enough for my 'fix'.  Fortunately, I like fighter and cleric types, so I won't have to suffer through the 'rogues can't solo' blues.

DDO could do for non-playing fans of DnD what MTG:O did for non-playing MTG:TCG fans. It's not an MMO in my opinion. It's not a glorified NWN mod either, nor is it Guild Wars. Rather, it's a game about linear storylines with an interesting combat system that has no built-in repeatability. It could take you months to play the game once, but once it is playable unless you truly love seeing the exact same thing from a different point of view.

That's the contradiction. Raiding works because people love their foozles enough to overcome the boredom of sameness. Yet raiding is not built into DDO. Every character you make goes through the same content unless you found the magic formula to let you bypass certain quest instances. As a result, unless the content doubles or triples in three to four months after launch, players who hit 10 will reroll as they normally do and find themselves in the exact same sequence doing the exact same thing.

This is why I don't consider it MMO. There's no longterm relationship set up with players at the core of the mechanic. Yes, new content will keep them interested, as will the occasional live event in the persistent spaces. But knowing the pace at which players will "beat" the game, I do not feel there's enough intrinsic repeatability to keep them interested between the release of that new content. Even AC1 didn't introduce an entire month's worth of content every month. They were more like spikes of newness throughout an otherwise typically-MMO experience that DDO does not have.

I want it to be successful. The truly creative quests made possible by the use of destructible objects gives a slightly HL2 experinece. The combat system is much better than just throwing stats around. And Turbine is a company I like. I just have my reservations about the potential, which, oddly, have remained largely consistent since the first I read about the title.

Sounds like I'm probably going to end up buying it anyways, then.  Since I like D&D (and most of the World of Darkness White Wolf stuff, for that matter) but never, ever get to play.  I've played like 2 or 3 times and they were all awful.  Watching that "If there are any chicks in the tavern I wanna doooo them!" thing is just so frightfully familiar.

But I dunno.  A major part of the appeal of D&D is its inherent flexibility, which is removed in this medium because we haven't yet figured out how to program infinite content/fluff.

Wait, I'm confused. The problem is D&DO is the same thing over and over again and other MMORPGs are not?


Every character in a MMORPG goes through the same content as well unless you are talking about switching Queynos/Freeport or Horde/Alliance or something like that. I mean, you roll an Orc Warrior you are going to be collecting 50 tiger hides the same as if you were a Troll Shaman.

DDO could easily add "raid content." A quest that is really long, gives good loot, and can only be done once a week. That's all a raid is.

DDO is weird - I'll probably write a real writeup about it. I'm ambivalent in the real sense - of two minds.

But both minds agree that February is too early to release.

My most concise thoughts about DDO:

I want to like it, but I am frustrated to apathy about it.

You cannot solo early, unless you are a barbarian.

The combat system is great in theory, and not too bad in practice. It feels a little clunky at times, but I think that's mostly related to the really rough UI (which I hope has changed since I last played).

This game is not ready for a end of February release. For a number of reasons, but the most obvious being balance and content.

There is not going to be enough content for this game at release, 1 month after release or 6 months after release. One year after release, it will have enough content to maybe be "worth it." If they had 6 more months of beta/development time, it would equal the same thing.

Music is good.

Graphics engine is good, graphic style, not so much. It's ok, but nothing that stands out.

Repeating quests in a game that is supposedly based on hand-crafted, player-oriented design is fundamentally wrong. It shouldn't be an option, much less thought to be required in order to level. But the farming, min-maxing retards must be catered to.

I'd just like to comment, before Haemish twists everyone's mind with his propaganda, that I've tried six different classes (rogue, ranger, fighter, barbarian, wizard, bard) and with each and every one of them I've been able to solo all the way to level 2.  Generally without dying even once.  And the very first class I tried (and still my favorite to date) is rogue. 

But then I have leeter skillz than most.   :-P

You are not normal. Average gamers like myself will be gimped to fuck and back.

So really, the statement should be "you cannot solo early, unless you are a barbarian and/or have better hand eye coordination and/or spatial awareness than the average MMOG player".   :wink:

No, that's not it. Really, it isn't. Before the 3.5 changes, I could solo with the almost exact same rogue. Something changed, something I've never quite been able to grok. The slower combat actually made it harder to hit with that character. Since I'm not a munchkin number cruncher, I never did much in the way of scientific tests to figure out why. That's not my job, it's the job of someone at Turbine in charge of balance. I can only give experiential evidence.

Basically, my experience went from an interesting game to a frustrating one, and I couldn't figure out why. Switching character classes just bummed me out, because the difference was night and day. I had also burned out on the newbie content; I felt the anti-desire to go back through quests I'd already finished or attempted twice. I am very much a once or twice content kind of guy; anymore attempts to make me consume the same content gives me gas.

Since the average MMOG player appears eager to consume the same content eleventy billion times until their eyes bleed, they may be ok in the content aspect. But I don't think so.

Har, you said "grok".

I dunno what the 3.5 changes might have been, but I'm almost certain that they didn't change the to-hit chances for the various classes.  They did scale up some of the quests around then, though, in horribly broken ways (Miller's Debt, Osgood's Basement, and the Lighthouse come to mind), which would definitely break the newbie soloing experience if those were the quests you happened to hit first.  I just ended up avoiding them after they were changed.

I am also not a fan of repeating content, but I'm hoping they make good on their promise to crank out a bunch more after release (and I do buy their explanation of putting all their resources into core gameplay pre-release so that content generation post-release will go faster).  If they don't, I'll unsub and maybe come back in a year.

I have read somewhere, that combat system is retarded, because attack spaming&bunnyhopping is way more effective than bothierning about shield. And because shield is useless against multiple enemies, it suck.(...) You can play with blocking, but spammage will get you next lv 5 times faster. Or something like that.
Can you test if that still hold true?

The latest patch imposes a -4 attack penalty for attacks made while moving, which is gonna cut down a lot on circle strafing.  I'm not sure yet how I feel about that, as I kinda liked the circle strafing.

"Bunnyhopping" was never a viable method of fighting since you can't attack in midair, which is usually what bunny hopping implies.  And I don't even know what that retard meant by "attack spamming".

My guess is he was just annoyed that pushing the Auto-Attack button and going to make himself a sandwich wasn't as viable a strategy as he had hoped.

My impression of combat is that it's basically the same as any other MMORPG game except that you have to move around to keep enemies in front of you.

True, the mechanics are different like rolling, using shield, etc, but while it kind of LOOKS like an action game combat system it really isn't.

For the most part you stand there and click attack as fast as you can, while moving sometimes to keep enemies in front of you. Shield is pretty hard to use effectively, so is rolling, and circle strafing is being nerfed, which is good because circle-strafing is a retarded non-strategy.

What the combat really needs is to feel more like an action game rather than look like one. In theory you can attack, see your enemy winding up and block, but in reality the recovery on your attack is so slow and the enemy attacks so non-descript it's hard to really do that. Also the feel is wrong, the length of your weapon doesn't seem to match how far you can hit, etc.

What they should have done was made it like PSO combat but with blocking and with misses based on die rolls.

Clicking attack as fast as you can is a less than optimal strategy if you're moving in and out of threat ranges, since then you lose the ability to time your attacks, and you only get an attack every few seconds at most anyway.

The next time I roll up a rogue or similar dex-monkey character I'm going to see if rolling is more effective than it used to be, since by rolling you can circle-strafe an enemy (and get a nice AC bonus as you do) but still be standing still as you attack.  I had the tumbling circle-strafe pretty well down before I discovered that doing the same thing running worked just as well and was much easier.  Now that attacking while running imposes a to-hit penalty, though, tumbling might actually be advantageous.

I never found that moving in and out of range really worked very well.

Depends on what you're fighting.  For relatively slow things like zombies it works GREAT because you can sometimes take a swing and then get out of their reach before they can swing back.  If you're just spamming the attack button while you do that, half your swings end up hitting air.  It also works on bad guys that have big windup times, like elementals and minotaurs and so forth (the types of things that hit you really hard when they connect).  Kobolds, not so much.

I never got far enough to fight any of those enemies other than Zombies.

I'd rather see them emulate Jade Empire's combat system if they were going to go for an Action RPG feel. The timing of special attacks in DDO always felt so drawn out.

I'm not even sure I didn't anything "wrong" with my rogue and it seems impossible to solo....but then, I'm going with weapon finesse, which I need level 2 for.


Having to "level" 5 times just to hit you next "real level" just feels dumb.


I also don't get the whole hate on Eberron. I've only experienced FR, and never seen Greyhawk. I personally couldn't care less which "universe" the game takes place in. If you have a good game, I don't think it would matter.

Unfortunately, this feels a bit meh, when I wanted to love it.

Is it too late for me to vote for Dragonlance?  :-)

Only women like Dragonlance..unless you're referring to the books.  In which case I'll revise it to, women and 13 year-old boys.  :evil:

To be honest, I left DL, Raven-whatsit Spelljammer and Planescape off because it seems like they never really took off.  When you talk to folks about D&D they make references to FR or GH 9/10 times with that last 1/10 divided among the rest. Again, unless you're talking about books.

I wouldn't mind Dragonlance.

Dragonlance at the very least had a fully realized world. Eberron, Forgotten Realms, etc are great places for campaigns but terrible places for games and books. They're just placeholder medieval fantasy lands. My world for a company to buy up the Planescape License and have a world that answers questions for itself like - "why's everything instanced" and "what's with this lack of continuity" and "why does one place have dinosaurs while the other place is a Lovecraft ripoff" and "why is this game fun?"

Upside of a Planescape license would be extremely varied monsters and environments and so forth.  Downside is that all that variation means a lot more development time.

Hm... I went the "swashbuckler" route with my rogue too (high dex, Dodge at 1st level, Weapon Finesse at 3rd), and I did okay.  I'm wondering if they changed something between now and then, since that was before the last wipe.  I'm tempted to roll up a 1st level rogue, solo as much as possible (maybe even exclusively) on my way to 2nd level, and post a journal of my experiences.

They did change something between the last wipe and this one. I could solo with my rogue before the last wipe and he was almost the same character.

Funny thing is that from a registered DM's perspective, early Planescape, and even after the boxed sets came out, seemed like nothing more than a means for min/max folks to level their characters to return as mini-dieties within the campaigns I helped coordinate.  However!!!  In a MMO setting, they're the perfect way to keep folks always on the path to new content in settings that pretty much require massive groups at some point to take on the heavy hitters.  The myriad of instancing possible in a Planescape setting would draw me to pay $15 a month much more than the current DDO makeup.  As it is, I'd do it for one month with my regular group until every got inevitably bored and moved onto the next shiny.

You should front this.

DDO could use some variation desperately.

Planescape could actually be a really cool expansion to DDO, either to add higher level content (11-20) or just to provide some variety to the existing game.  It'd integrate really nicely; no reason they couldn't "discover" a few portals to Sigil right in Stormreach.

That is the immpression I got as well, and it really surprised me.  If anything I was expecting the combat to suck and the visuals, stories and "zones" for lack of a better word to be cool works of art.  I haven't gotten that immpression at all from what I've seen.  Too bad really.

I went with a dual class ranger/rogue, took ranger first with favored enemy reptilian, ended up with a composite longbow of reptilian bane.
I added in rogue as the 2nd level, already had good hiding/sneak/spot/listen from the elf, so I dumped points into disarm traps and and some more hide/sneak.

And it made a very soloable toon.  The hiding/sneak was very useful in finishing a lot of dungeons that I couldn't solo with a fighter type do to the many numbers of things that I had to try and beat.  Being a ranger with all the bonuses to ranged combat, and reptiles as the favored enemy helped.  Being able to 1 or 2 shot the kobolds from range, helps.  Being able to take down a mob of three of them with only having one of them reach you with less then half health helps.

I played a straight out rogue who was rough, until he hit 3rd.  The above mentioned dual class ranger/rogue. A barbarian who pretty much just pummeled anything in his way.  A cleric that was  pro-turn undead.  A sorcerer, that I never got far, because in the beginning they were so gimped until they got redone in the past 4-5 patches.

Other than the Sorcerer they were all pretty much soloable, just in different ways.  The ranger/rogue combo was the easiest.  I use him as a parlour trick for my group of friends, when they are having a hard time with a mission I pull him out and we just kind of breeze through it.

I've stopped playing for now and am waiting for the release, so the newbie dungeons have a chance to drift out of the "I know them like the back of my hand" spot.  Having snuck both a rogue and a ranger/rogue through them.  You get a good memorization of all the little nooks and cranny's to go hide in and wait for things to wander by, before you pop out and get them, or continue on the way without molesting them.

I would give my left foot for an aswome planescape mmog. The world is perfict. *drools*

Agreed.  It is hard to imagine DnD with that absent.

I have an odd feeling that regardless what class Heamish plays - he plays them the same way.  He probably tries to put a 2 handed something in the hands of every class he picks and charge into melee  :-D

You're a warrior type through and through Haemish - don't piss around pretending to "play" other classes  8-)

It's pretty much like DnD with a DM who only runs store-bought dungeon crawl modules, knows all of the rules inside and out, but isn't at all flexible.  Some people (not me, but they do exist) prefer that sort of thing over more freeform campaigns.

I don't see DDO as an alternative to bona fide free-form PnP with a creative DM by any stretch.  I see it as an alternative to Diablo or EQ or WoW or what have you.  The main thing that the D&D license brings to the table is the game mechanics (d20 skill/combat system and D&D character classes), which I personally prefer over those in any RPG (PnP or otherwise) I've played to date.

The bottom line here, to be frank, is that the game has some promise but in it's current state isn't very good and that isn't going to magically change come February. Anything else is just details.

At this point it's not any better than Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube.

You know, I always wanted to try Phantasy Star Blue Burst or whatever the PC MMO was called but the beta client fucking hated my router and I dont turn off the router for some beta.

The shiney sure looked shiney though, but I bet it was a grind fest.

\/\/\/\/\/
Nope I went as far as to turn my comp into a DMZ and tried but the server refused to cooperate.

Port Forwarding? My router had trouble with SoE games when I first got it.

Yes, I do have a warrior's mentality. However, that isn't how I played the rogue. I didn't go two-handed. In fact, I went rapier, and tried it both with and without shield. I tried sneaking around a number of mobs in the quests I couldn't finish. The main quests I am thinking of involve either areas you cannot sneak past no matter what the mob is or how good your sneak is (the rogue had improved sneak and a 16 dex, trying to sneak past CR .25 kobolds) or it involves mobs that are apparently impossible to sneak past (zombies). The most frustrating quest to me was the one that seemed to be tailor-made for a rogue, the Librarian quest. It's a level 1 quest. I was level 1. I'm supposed to steal a book, get caught in all these traps, and then find a way out of the tower with the book with as little conflict as possible. That leads me to believe I could sneak through the whole thing. Or disarm the traps.

I couldn't. I couldn't disarm the traps. I couldn't sneak past the zombies, they would see me every time. I couldn't fight the zombies because they were three and four at a time. Even when I made it past the zombies and the traps, I HAVE to fight an undead bowmen guarding a lever that opens doors. The quest was written as if one person should do it, after all, it's a pretty straight forward "You need to steal this for me" quest. The very context of the quest says "solo" to me, as I fail to see how a librarian wouldn't get suspicious of a group of 6 people coming in to take this book, some of which look like complete savages who can't read (barbarians or war golems). Maybe others can do the quest, but I couldn't. I died something like 10-15 just trying to do that quest, both with and without combat.

I'm not discounting the fact that my skills may not have been up to the task. I may just suck at the game. But I don't think that was the only obstacle.

OTOH, I felt that I could probably take my barbarian through that quest without blinking.

There used to be a lot more quests that were 100% stealthable... the librarian quest, Osgood's Basement, and Miller's Debt all come to mind.  The problem was that they were not only 100% stealthable, it took about 30 seconds to complete them, so in the beta 3 update or thereabouts they added in a bunch of extra space and lots of mandatory combat to stop the farming.   :x  As usual, we can't have nice things.

There are still quests that can be completed with pure stealth, though.  Bringing the Light and Dread Eye of Khyber are two that benefit greatly from a stealthy approach.  (In fact, Dread Eye of Khyber is nigh impossible to complete without stealth.)  And there are still a number of missions where you can bypass about 90% of the combat if you're stealthy.

I agree that there definitely could stand to be more quests of that nature, but we've already established that they need to have more content in general.  It doesn't mean that rogues are inherently gimpy compared to barbarians, which is what you were claiming.  (My barbarian couldn't solo that damn librarian quest either at level 1.) 

The thing that gives me hope for DDO is the fact that their core systems are pretty damn solid - at last count, every single class is playable (and reasonably well balanced with other classes), every single skill works like it's supposed to, and the combat system is fairly fun.  And there isn't any spawn camping or ninja looting.  That, to me, is huge.  All they have to do now is make good on their promise to keep adding content post-release, and do a good job of it.

Try using theives tools rather than the hilt of your dagger.


That sucks.  Next time, take off your platemail.


You're going to have to break this habit of using battle shouts - it breaks stealth - and wakes everyone up.


You don't * have * to fight him.  You could sneak by you know.  Trouble maker.

 :-D

Stop with the SirBrucing, please.

EDIT: Yeah, it was funny. I was tired.

Oh shutup, jpark's reply was goddamn funny.

Don't be a twat and try to actually read.


Funny. Do you have a point?



I wore the best leather/light armor I could find. It wasn't my armor, twat.


Stealth didn't work on the zombies. At all. I didn't have the choice of avoiding combat with them, whether I was stealthed or not.


No, you can't, because he sees through stealth too. I mean honestly, was this just a sarcasm post, or are you trying to be a cockgobbler?

It was meant to be completely tongue in cheek! Why am I the only one who saw it? I thought the battle shout part was money.

I'm fairly sure it was a sarcasm post.  I'm also glad he wasn't actually saying this to your face, judging by your reaction....

You'll excuse me for being a bit touchy about the combat rogue part. I died A LOT with this character, just trying to be stealthy, or I don't know, trying to kill one fucking monster. Seriously, I was extremely frustrated with the character, and every time I tried to ask anyone what I was doing wrong, I was told "a rogue is teh awesome at higher levels!!1!" and "stop playing him like a warrior!" In other words, I heard the same shit I've heard over and fucking over again in every motherfucking shit-stained beta of a game from the beginning of fucking time.

If you tell me I'm not playing my character "right," BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTT, game is fucked, move on. It's "same as it ever was." I'm sick and tired of betas of games that have decent potential being flushed down the fanbois cumspigot, while I'm told there's nothing wrong with the game.

Plus, it's Tuesday, and my vagina is sandy.

P.S. The warrior shout thing was witty, however.

As an experiment, I rolled up a new level 1 rogue on Kundarak this past weekend, just to see if it was as bad as I kept hearing from Haemish.  Soloing as a rogue is definitely tougher now than it was in alpha - I'd say that most people should be able to get through the newbie area (the tutorial, the Wavecrest series, the Goodblade series, and the Low Road) solo, but once you get to the main harbor area it's trickier. 

I managed to do Miller's Debt, Sewer Rescue, Bringing the Light, and Dread Eye of Khyber solo (generally with 95% stealth and 5% combat), but there's absolutely no room for error - if you misjudge a sentry's patrol path and cut too close in front of him as you're sneaking around, he spots you and rings the gong and you get gangraped.  I think it's also still possible to solo Waterworks as a rogue, but again, zero room for error now (I got about halfway through and fucked up by brushing against a guard), so it's not going to be the average person's cup of tea.

I think the general idea is that soloing gets tougher and tougher the farther you get, with the harbor gates being the turning point at which most people are going to want to find a group unless they're antisocial to the point of masochism.

Sounds like D&D to me.

Exactly.  There's a reason you don't "solo" in D&D.  Gotta at least have someone to find the pieces and duct tape them back together.

There's a reason this game will have a large number of box sales and low subscriptions.

I think Haemish already summed it up well.  Something about genitalia.

My post was pure sarcasm guys lol.

Next time I will add:

 :-D :-) :-D :-) :-D

Don't you dare. I lolled.

I don't think it will have high box sales and low subs. I'm guessing low box sales and low subs. Word of mouth on this is a solid "meh" at best.

/agree

"Meh" is an improvement over the word of mouth I've been hearing, when it's been getting any WoM at all. Methinks my status as official DDO doomcaster (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5417.msg144778#msg144778) is looking better and better.

Joy!

That's pretty much exactly what I said when I saw a demo at E3 (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=3348.0).

This could be a good lesson in appraising what licensed content means for a product, IMO.  D&D gets attached to something and everyone salivates over that and brings in all of these associations of fun D&D sessions they had in high school.  But the reality is that a license like that is mostly restrictive on a game design and doesn't necessariily lead to fun in the completely different context of an online video game.  Licenses almost always add only consumer recognition and associations to a product and rarely add gameplay value.  Look at most of the innovative games of the last few years and you'll see that they are almost always based off of of new IP.

 In this case I think that D&D is fun in a P&P setting because it is a fun core set of rules that a DM can write stories around, and relies very heavily on a DM tweaking every last detail and leading characters through a hand-crafted story.  Hand-crafted stories just aren't something that MMO's do well.  You need a DM there to add the flavor and allow for players to do stuff that wasn't intended.  It sounds like Turbine tried to capture that experience anyway (which is good, whether they succeeded or not).  But I'm not at all surprised that they are lacking content and haven't really pulled off the fun storymaking aspect of a P&P game of D&D.

The system is not the problem. I daresay the system is fine or even good.

The problem is everything else. Does the D&D rule system say that it has to be always rainy and that armor is not 3-dimensional? I don't think it does.

Content design and innatention to detail are the problems. System design is fine.

So they have enough content and have captured D&D sorts of storytelling?  That's not what anyone else seems to be saying.

Gabe.

Is this opposite day?

No, they do not have enough content. (or enough variety, not the same exact thing)

No, they do not capture D&D storytelling.

However, the fact that they are using the D&D ruleset has nothing to do with the above. The content has NOTHING to do with the ruleset. The rules don't say that every dungeon has to be some guy's basement. The rules don't say the entire world has to be the same dingy color and graphics. The rules are not the problem.

If anything, the rules are a bright spot.

Original comment:


This is NOT THE PROBLEM. The rules set is fine. It's everything else that is the problem.

To me it says bad things about Turbine that the part of the game that is decent is the part they took from D&D. All the parts they had to do themselves came out much worse.

System is not the issue. License is not the issue. If you took WoW, made very quest take place in a dark basement and made it always rainy that would suck too.

Like Doom 3 ?

IYO.

IMO and according to a lot of the other complaints I've read, the system has a lot to do with it.  There's no crafting, combat isn't that actively engaging, grouping is too enforced and sucks when you aren't around a table with your friends, a lot of abilities don't make sense unless you look to their D&D analogues, etc.  A lot more than: OMG, the graphics r teh sux even though that may be true.  If the only complaints were that the graphics sucked and the content was short I'd expect a fair amount of people to be rather happy with the game even if they didn't play it for that long.

And the amount of content, IMO, has a lot to do with the attempt to capture the D&D license.  Dungeons that look the same are a symptom of having spent too long trying to flesh out the wrong sorts of things because you were held to a certain license/feel (problematic when you don't have the insane budgets of a Blizzard game).  If they hadn't been tied to the license they would have had more creative control to create content in a manageable fashion that worked within their limitations.

Have you played DDO?  Or D&D for that matter?  None of the things you list are products of the D&D license.  I could refute each one individually if it didn't mean SBing the thread to hell and back, but instead I'll just say that I disagree with what you said.

Samwise won't SB but I will.  :evil:


1: Nothing in D&D rules prevents crafting. This is a weak point though you can argue that they wanted to stay true to the license and D&D isn't about crafting so the game isn't either.

2: D&D rules don't force grouping.

3: Grouping being less fun when you aren't eating pizza with your buddies in the same room is a fact of life. It has nothing to do with D&D rules. I could say the same about playing MarioKart with 4 players in your living room vs. over the net.

4: Abilities that don't make sense: this is your only complaint that has any merit. I agree that some of the abilities did not translate all that well.



Here are the main complaints, not from me, but from people in general:

1: Not much content
2: Not much content variety
3: Have to group
4: Have to run the same quests over and over
5: Combat doesn't feel right.
6: Nothing to do except run quests, no other meta-game elements like crafting, etc
7: Graphically blah
8: Setting blah

Out of those, only 8 is tied directly to D&D and the world of Eberron. In real D&D you don't have to group, you don't have to run the same quests over and over, not every quest takes place in a basement, combat doesn't have bad sound effects, etc etc etc.


The people implementing the system are a totally different set of people than content designers. Given that you are a game developer I am surprised you would fall into this noob trap! (Saving throw vs. not understanding industry failed!)

The people creating the dungeons are content designers - planners, texture artists, 3d artists, etc. Those are NOT the same people implementing combat or making stealth work correctly or anything like that.

When I played D&D there were adventures on Jurassic Park style islands, adventures in Ravenloft, etc. D&D does have a lot of dungeon style adventures but in D&DO "sewer, basement, warehouse (AKS basement above ground)" describe tons of quests all with basically the same graphics, layouts, etc.

Even if every single quest takes place in a dungeon the dungeons could at least be constructed somewhat differently - use different colors, different layouts and architectures, etc. Why does every dungeon in the game have the same breakable barrel and box, and the same giant stack of crates everywhere?

That's a failure of content design.

Now it is quite possible that the people at the top were so obsessed with making saving roll vs. whatever so accurate they didn't bother checking up on the content design and didn't really care that it sucked - but that is NOT a problem with the D&D license, that's a problem with people not being competent at their jobs.

I was secretly hoping someone else would do it.  Thank you.   :heart:

Yes and yes.  Of the latter, quite a lot.

And I think you guys are missing my point because you aren't able to look past first play experiences to the reality of developing the thing.  Having played DDO I saw a lot of effort made to capture the license and not a lot of great game left after that (i.e. combat wasn't that exciting, content was drab)..  Having actually spoken to a couple DDO devs I was told that this is where the emphasis was going.  In asking about other things, such as crafting, I was told: we just want core 3.5 in.  Because, obviously, that taps into an existing fanbase and brings certain associations along with it.  Associations that, IMO, aren't really going to be done justice because MMO's aren't anywhere near ready to capture the dynamic of tabletop gaming and even if they were, Turbine is spending too much effort on license details, with too little of a budget (compared to a giant budget like WoW's) to do it.

I'm not complaining about Eberron, I could care less about that.  I'm complaining about a relatively bland game that doesn't do much, IMO, other than meat the minimum contract of fulfilling the license, a license that creates more liabilities than opportunities.

Gabe.

All of these are very strongly tied to a development team whose priority is on fulfilling license responsiblities first.

Gabe.

So when you said:


you really meant to say:


correct?  I don't think the latter is really an earth-shaking statement.

No, I meant to say the former.

The requirement of putting Jedis into SWG had a great effect on the design of that game.

A while ago I worked on a design for a Hasbro-licensed title.  I have lots of ideas for what I think are fun games.  I couldn't use most of them for that, however, as they don't work with the licensed property (and in the end, playing well with the license is more important to the people with money than being fun).

Gabe.

Yes, it required that the game have Jedis in it, which, if the game were to follow the license at all, would need to be severely imbalanced with respect to all other character classes.  Class imbalance is bad, hence the convoluted "force sensitive" system to try to minimize the impact... et cetera.

I don't think you can draw parallels to DDO.  One of the big differences is that D&D is already designed as an RPG - translating the d20 ruleset to a computer game isn't trivial, but it doesn't require nearly as much overhead as trying to design a brand new ruleset that somehow represents reality established by movies and novels and turns it into a game.  I might even go so far as to say that a lot of design tasks are actually made easier by having the d20 ruleset to work from.  The SWG designers could never figure out what the hell a "smuggler" profession should entail in the context of a MMORPG - it's not exactly rocket science to figure out what a "wizard" or "barbarian" should be like.

There was a Star Wars RPG plenty of material for SOE to work with.  It was actually a decent little system.

I haven't played the Star Wars RPG so I can't be certain, but I very much doubt that it has anything in common with SWG apart from the setting.  Am I wrong?

(edit)

My point, in case it's not clear, is that there's a huge difference between trying to adapt lore into a game and trying to adapt a game into a game. 

SWG was an example of trying to adapt lore into a game - worse, it was an example of trying to adapt lore into a pre-existing set of game ideas that had nothing to do with the lore.  Had SWG been an adaptation of the pre-existing Star Wars RPG rather than a new game based on an existing movie license, I'm betting it wouldn't have had problems like, say, half the Smuggler skill tree being either useless or nonexistent.

DDO is an example of adapting a game into a very similar type of game.  Worlds of difference.  The amount of "lore" that needed to be translated into the game was minimal, which is exactly why the setting they used was Eberron rather than something more well-known like Forgotten Realms. Forgotten Realms has mountains of novels and pre-established settings that people would want to see faithful in-game recreations of; Eberron has very little lore associated with it and hence provides a lot of freedom to establish new lore.

We are talking about DDO.


So your professional opinion is that making people run the same quest multiple times was done because running a quest only once did not work with the D&D license, EVEN THOUGH THAT IS HOW D&D ACTUALLY WORKS?

It's telling that neither of your examples is actually related to what we are talking about. DDO - remember?

Your opinion is that combat sounds are goofy because good sound effects are not compatible with the license?

Your opinion is that every dungeon is a basement with stacks of boxes in it because that is what the license says, even though D&D itself is not like that?

Why not choose the very obvious answer? When was the last time Turbine made something good? They don't make very good games - that's really all there is to it.

AC2 didn't have any sort of restrictive license. What was the excuse there? They were held down by AC1?

The answer his is lack of vision, lack of talent. It's that simple. The D&D license doesn't force the modellers to make armor look spray-painted on to bare skin. In D&D you don't enter a quest by going into a sewer grate which is 10 feet away from a door leading to another quest and 10 feet away from a warehouse leading to yet another quest. That has nothing to do with the license.

Maybe they were overly concerned with making the license work out exactly? That's possible, but that IS NOT A RESTRICTION OF THE LICENSE.

Unless you can show us the actual legal document that says what you say it says I'm going to go with common sense here and claim that the license probably doesn't say that combat sound effects have to be bad.

WE, THE LICENSEES, AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING:

1: All armor must be poorly modelled and look 2 dimensional
2: All quests must be run multiple times
3: There should not be enough quests
4: Quests shall re-use the same graphics over and over again
5: It will always be raining
6: Combat sound effects must be bad
7: Combat must feel off
etc etc

THOSE are restrictions. "You cannot invent feats that are not in D&D" are restrictions. Bad sound effects? No, I really doubt those are codified in the legal doc.

DDO has a lot of the same problems as AC2. Coincidence? Remember how in AC2 there were three newbie dungeons, they were all exactly the same and looked awful...yeah.

The artwork for DDO I can't really lay at Turbine's feet either.  With D&D 3rd Edition and beyond they started using a staff artist by the name of Lockwood.  He's got a distinct style and you can definitely see that influence in DDO.

 Of course, since his style sucks hard, IMO, this isn't a positive thing. His artwork further suffers from a minimal palette of colors that's more appropriate for an Emo/ Gothy angst-ridden setting like Vampire than High Fantasy.  He's no Parkinson, Caldwell, Brom or Elmore.

I do miss Tony DiTerlizzi.  His art is a large part of what made Planescape pop.

I haven't really seen DDO except for over Signe's shoulder once or twice. By saying that Todd Lockwood's style is all over it, does this mean its going to have as miserable a palette as Morrowind?

It's mostly browns, grays, and earthy greens.  Here are a few representative screenshots of the main hub areas:

Newbie tutorial area (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/34/77/66/89/711.jpg)
The harbor (rainy) (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/82/40/46/56/516.jpg)
The harbor (not rainy) (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/70/99/80/21/483.jpg)
The marketplace (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/74/33/97/28/169.jpg)
House Kundarak (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/06/01/28/28/549.jpg)
House Deneith (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/84/40/81/57/507.jpg)
House Phiarlan (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/08/54/89/77/444.jpg)
House Jorasco (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/87/15/05/80/577.jpg)
The Twelve (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/95/44/13/26/576_108_tn.jpg)

And some of the quest areas:

A basement (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/13/31/43/50/173.jpg)
Another basement (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/07/88/51/62/552.jpg)
Yet another basement (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/19/94/71/03/438.jpg)
A graveyard (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/06/46/24/27/551.jpg)
A jungle (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/31/89/33/88/182.jpg)
A beach (http://ddoimages.turbine.com/files/80/50/54/99/713.jpg)

Even the beach looks dingy.

What's funny is that when you exit the game and it give you the "buy this, coming soon!" screen that screen looks more colorful than anything in the actual game - I guess the marketing guys have a better grasp on what people want than the actual content designers.

TO be fair, most beaches (outside of Club Med) are.

Or perhaps Venice Beach, Copacabana, Ipanema, Waikiki, Bondi Beach, Nassau Beach...

There's even shite beaches like Blackpool Pleasure Beach that are colorful. Most of those screenshots look like the toilet scene of Trainspotting.

You are missing the whole "game" and "fantasy" aspect of fantasy gaming.  :-P

I want a nice, sunny beach with crystal blue water, not a NYC beach with medical waste washing up on it. I suppose in real life most suits of armor look pretty much the same - then again real life doesn't have Orcs.

No, it is because the priority of the team wasn't on creating lots of fun content, it was on fulfilling a license.  And when they got near the release date they gave to funding the project, they had to make compromises like requiring that quests be done multiple times.  What you are mentioning is actually a good example of exactly the point I am trying to make.  They put their effort into trying to fulfill a license.  And failed.  In manners exactly like your example: every quest isn't unique.

If instead of trying to fulfill a license as their first priority, they had gone out with the goal of trying to make the most fun game, accepting certain limitations that they were under, they would have made a more fun game.

You seem to be under the impression that a dev team just magically conjures the content of their choice, that creating content is a simple choice, not a task that takes quite a bit of time and money and must be juggled with other tasks.


Which is exactly what my example was: adapting a Hasbro GAME to be a mobile GAME (in this case, a game where the player can win real prizes).  Any license, be it a game, a movie, a book, whatever, implies both a lot of limitations on the design and a lot of requirements that need to be met whether they make the game more fun or less fun.

Adapting D&D to a game like the original SSI titles is one thing: it's a pretty 1-1 conversion.  And even then, most of what makes D&D fun at home is missed in the CRPG.  An 3D MMO however is a very different setting.  And in this case I think the license got in the way a lot more than it helped.

That's my opinion.  Take it as you will.

That's simply not accurate. Ken Troop has stated many times that his vision is that players repeat quests over and over again until they master every aspect of them. It wasn't a compromise made towards the end of release - it was the plan all along.

Again I would point out that the people designing the systems are different than content designers. The content designers HAVE to make suits of armor - they don't have to make them look bad. They have to make combat sound effects - they don't have to make those sound bad. Going from D&D to some invented world doesn't change the fact that sound effects and suits of armor must be created. And it's not like those guys were busy coding the saving throw rules and hence couldn't spend the time making sound effects sound nice.

Now as to the priorities of the team - maybe all they cared about was the license and nothing else. You know what that says to me? Sucky team. If they didn't have the D&D license there would be some other reason the game came out poorly. As I pointed out, AC2 sucked and that didn't have any license restrictions.

SWG is much the same way. People blame license problems but the stuff they invented, like HAM, just plain sucked, and they have proven time and time again they are an amateurish development team. And they added a bunch of things like creature handlers that have nothing at all to do with the license. The SW license problems are a red herring. It could have been a good game, it just wasn't. It's that simple.

There certainly are cases where you have a great idea but someone says "in Jeopardy there are 2 15 minutes rounds and that's it!" or "in Star Wars Jedi's are rare and powerful." But nobody was saying "In star wars every combatant has 3 pools, and special moves subtract from those pools!"

In some cases a license truly is a restriction - in others it is an excuse. Given Turbine's track record, this looks like excuse to me. Things not affected by the license at all (bugs, sound effects, etc) have problems just like other Turbine games have the same problems. Blaming the D&D artist for art design problems is kind of silly when AC2 had many of the same problems.

If you get close to an enemy in DDO and they just stop attacking for some reason, that isn't the D&D license at work. That's sucky programming at work.

I certainly agree that sometimes a license can hamstring you. People being obsessed with the license is a much more hand-wavy problem, especially when you extend it to things like bugs and modelling that have nothing to do with the license at all.

If a company produces two mediocre games in a row, my conclusion is that the company is mediocre.

Play Far Cry.

Shockeye is right. Also, Margalis I agree with almost everything you said, except the last bit.

The number of dev teams that went from creating something amazing to something totally shitty is an astounding number. As such, this isn't a guilty until proven so thing. This is a "mediocre" until proving us otherwise. The number of dev teams that consistantly make amazing stuff can be counted on one hand for America and two hands for Japan.

That, sir, was a racist statement. Just because the Japanese have smaller hands doesn't mean they need two to equal one of ours.

(http://animepa.csusm.edu/dvdcaps/AzumangaDaioh/Opening/AZUOPEN_098.jpg)

DOA Extreme Volleyball: MMO Edition?

That's not the sort of decision that is in the hands of the designer.  If you include producer/execs in the word "team" then ok.  It is my experience that almost EVERY aspect of a game has producers and execs breathing down its neck so that is fair to a certain extent.  But generally if you mean by "team" those directly making the game then this misses the point.

SWG is a different beast. And a lot of its problems ARE license-related.  It just happens that a lot of its other problems had to do with having a fractured identity as a product and not enough time to become finished (and really no one caring to take the time to adequately test drive the combat engine).  But a big part of that fractured identity was the "contract" of fulfilling the license.  That end is going to be far more interesting to the higher level folk and as such will receive a lot more attention.  The more license-focused a title is, the less resources it will get to fun gameplay.  Which is why in most cases a licensed title with fun gameplay is an exception and fun/innovative products tend to be unlicensed.  From experience I almost always more interested in a title if it doesn't involve a license of some sorts because I know what the license implies to the development process and I know that licenses correlate high with poor design towards fun.

Yes there are content designers and systems designers.  You'd think that'd make a big difference.  But it doesn't.  I think somewhere you are just oversimplifying the development process (and ignoring the amount of control that comes from outside the core team).  And thereby you are missing the point.  Again, just my opinion.

I also think that the core game of D&D is not a very fun MMO experience.  It isn't even DIKU, where we were 20 years ago.  Adding that to the prior discussion of licenses, and hearing devs at E3 stress how they were just trying to nail the core of 3.5 with no bells and whistles makes me very unsurprised that DDO isn't that exciting.

Gabe.

Also, the best fantasy I've read in years has been GRRM.  And I just read some Steven Erikson and that's pretty good, but pretty dark stuff too.  I think "bright, sunny" fantasy is vastly overrated.

Gabe.

The fact that DDO is not fun has nothing to do with the license, or "execs breathing down someone's neck"- it's simply not a good game, end of story.

Margalis pointed out some things, such as the art assets or SFX, which are crap only because they were made that way. There's no reason the graphics had to look mediocre, or the combat had to be lackluster.

A mediocre game is the product of a mediocre production team.

DDO has a delayed release and only half the intended levels.  Plus there's an interview somewhere from 6 months or so ago where they stated the intention was to release DDO with between 150-200 quests, it's being released with, I think, 133.  What else can Ken Troop say about the lack of content?  The company line is always going to be something along the lines of "what we have is fun!".

I'd agree with you on sucky team & AC2 comments as I think part of the reason it's being released late and content light is due to spending more time on the engine and minor things like chat (heh).  Sucky programming directly affects content designers as the tools/documentation for them will generally be the first thing to slip if the project is near/past deadline, so in part, it's a knock on effect.

And boy, how right you are.

Right.  It has nothing to do with the production process.  It has to be because "the designer is just dumb" and the "artists suck".

BTW: who do you think hires and pays the designers, artists and programmers?

As for Ken Troop, he also said:


Sometimes it's just about PR.  D&D is the foundation of Diku and EQ.  I wonder where he thinks the holy trinity came from if not games that were already heavily reliant on D&D as a model.  And as I said, the core D&D game isn't even where Diku was at 20 years ago.  It just isn't that interesting as a model for an MMO.  What makes D&D interesting in real life is the table-top dynamic, the context of the game, a context which can't be recreated in an MMO.  It was a mistake to think that using D&D as a basis was anything but going backwards in time and consumers were mistaken if they bought hype that said otherwise.  Oh, sure, they used a slightly different UI.  And now most of you know that it's still just a lot of mad clicking on the same old thing.

Gabe.

Whether or not the "team" includes the producers is a red-herring. If they are affecting the game they are part of the team. Second I find it hard to believe that the producers can tell if saving throw vs. trap is implemented 100% accurately or not.


And most aren't. Concrete examples are not your strong point are they? SWG has (had?) terrible combat - nothing to do with the license. Bugs? Nothing to do with license. Lack of content, randomly generated terrain? Nothing to do with license. Entire classes being broken for months or years? Nothing to do with the license. Raph saying on the beta boards that the game would be ready to ship in 3 weeks when it was in reality 6 months off (and that was 6 months too early) - nothing to do with license.


I don't care. If the artists are bad because they are bad, I really don't care that it isn't their fault because the higher-ups didn't hire good people. Maybe they don't pay enough. I don't know - and I don't care. What I know is that the art design and modelling is bad, just like it was in AC2. Maybe they have some really great people who are being misused, or maybe they suck. I can't say. But the end result is bad. Maybe all the developers and artists are great and it's the money-men who are messing things up.

Clearly some of their decision making is suspect. (Think AC2 and the no towns) The bottom line is they aren't making good products. Whether or not that is a function of the "team" vs producers is a pretty meaningless distinction.


Well we can agree on that. I wouldn't say it is going backwards, but it isn't going forwards either. And yes, tank/healer/mage and such still apply. (For the same reasons we have tank/mortar/mechanic in the army) I said a long while ago that D&D is basically generic fantasy, and that a D&D license doesn't make a lot of sense. I do think they've managed to make a game that feels a lot like D&D on some level. But I think they've vastly over-estimated how many people really care about that.

Arthur Parker said:

That is a good point, but even 200 vs. 133 quests is going to be a lot of repitition. Another thing they didn't count on was people choosing the quests with the best risk/reward and doing them over and over, which should have been obvious.

In PSO you run the same quests (or minor variations) a lot of times. But there it works to some extent. Here it doesn't, for a variety of reasons that I am too lazy to get into.



How about the bug where you log in and someone else's quest window appears randomly? And the chat...how long did it take them to get chat working in AC2? Like a YEAR or something absurd like that. And they have chat problems in DDO too. Chat server is NOT supposed to be the hard part! I've never heard of any other game having problems like that.

Exactly the point I've been making all along.  I'm glad you could finally admit to agreeing with it.

As for the rest.  You want the producer to count as "part of the team", or really a part of the creative process, if they influence how the project is created (and actually I have no problem with that characterization) .  But you won't allow that the license is just as much a part of the creative process?  It is typically a HUGE concern for the producer/execs (and it should be, because unfortunately licenses are a huge part of selling your game).  Probably their first concern when they come to view how the work is going.  You're going to have to reconcile those two.

The sooner consumers can get over licenses and can start to realize that they correlate strongly (if not completely, KotOR's still get made now and then) with poor gameplay, the sooner dev teams can remove that burden from the creative process and move on to concentrating on making FUN games.

Gabe.

In this thread you've "made" (actually grandstanded would be a better word) a few dozen points, the most baseless and contentious of which was that the bulk of problems in DDO and other games were results of their licenses. You don't "win" just because somebody agrees with a fractional part of one of more of your comments. You're coming across like the furry banned onanist that everybody loves to hate.

I'm not trying to imply that because Margalis admitted to agreeing on one point that "OMG I won". What does pushing that argument on me and calling me names accomplish?   That D&D isn't a very interesting starting point for a game, however, was really my main point (follow my link in my original post) and I think that if Margalis wasn't so busy trying to snipe at me he might have recognized that he agreed with my core assertion a number of posts ago.

I also think that there is a lot be to said for how licenses impair the design process, and I continued to elaborate on that -- if producers/execs count as part of the creative process, how can the license, which is a primary concern these guys, not also count?  And how long can one ignore the high correlation of licenses to crappy products?  And because I'll get sniped at again, YES, there are other variables.  I was just pointing out two such variable: that concern for fulfilling the license (from those paying the bills) often creates onerous design constraints and takes quite a bit of attention away from concern about creating a fun game.  That there are other reasons why licenses suck (such as creating a high barrier to entry in the market) doesn't mean that these other two points aren't also quite valid and important.

>onanist
obscure words ftw

You'll need to do more than throw out more unsubstantiated claims like that to convince me. There are more games not based on licenses than there are games based on licenses. There are more bad games than good games. We could do a statistical survey to see how the proportions married up, but either side would be in danger of either consciously or unconsciously compromising the research by failing to agree on which games were bad and which were good.

PS: I didn't call you names. I said you were coming across like somebody who used to post here, who I called names. Reading is hard.

Ok.  Go read this (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5413.0).  Come back and tell me how many of those are licensed titles. Franchises, mind you, aren't licenses.

Can't you guys just concede an obvious point when one hits?  Or must it all be uphill?

Gabe.

WTF dude seriously..I've defended you in the past. This is just lame. I said this MONTHS ago, before I had a hint of actual gameplay. The D&D license is not particularly strong and is not something I would base a game around. It doesn't add much.

But that hasn't been your point. Your point has been that "license restrictions" have made DDO into a bad game. I've given tons of examples, you haven't given any. You've reached into some Hasbro game you worked on (irrelevant) and SWG, and SWG isn't even a good example. And you didn't have anything concrete to say about SWG either!

I want to hear how the DDO license makes the sound effects weak already. I've given you itemized lists. I want to hear how the Star Wars license forced the SWG devs to create the awful HAM system.



They correlate but not for the reasons you think. Most companies that make licensed games make poor games in general. They see licenses as a quick buck. Houses that rely on licenses tend to have low pride in their product, low creativity and be driven by short-term bottom-line. The thing is, these houses would make bad games even without licenses!

It's like hollywood retreads. Most of them are bad. The people creating them have no talent and no creativity. If you forced them not to retread they would STILL have no talent and no creativity. Do you think Uwe Boll would make good films if he started with an original script?

Good companies do good things with licenses:

Batman for NES. - Sunsoft. (Good company at the time)
Aliens vs. Predator - Capcom
KOTOR - Bioware
Super Robot Wars Series - Bandai (?)
Gundam fighting games - Capcom (?)
XMen Arcade - Konami
TMNT Arcade - Konami
TMNT (NEST) - Ultra (Konami spinoff)

See a pattern? Capom, Bioware, Konami, Sunsoft and Bandai all make good products! Everyone loves TMNT in the arcade!

Then you have companies like Activision, Turbine, etc. EA did a terrible job with the Marvel license while Capcom made lots of Marvel-based games that ruled. The difference? EA can't make anything except sports games.

Licensed games as a whole aren't any worse than other games IMO, they just get undue press because of the license. But for every absolutely terrible EA Marvel game (Rise of the Imperfects) there is an XMen vs. SF (a good licensed game) or a bad, unlicensed game.

It's all in how you use it. TMNT is probably the most popular Final Fight style game of all time.

You need a lesson in statistical significance.

Ok, give me your statistical analysis.  We're looking for quality now, not quantity sold (I won't try and say that licenses don't sell).

Besides, you seem to agree with me, again:

This is just a different way of saying what I was saying.  And it leads to the answer to your other question: how does a game get crappy sound because it is a licensed title.  It happens because the focus of everyone driving development is the license (which your example is a certain expression of).  In the case of sound, sound is VERY often left to the end of the development cycle (there was a great screed about this on Penny Arcade by a sound engineer but I can't find it).  This is more likely to happen in an environment where the license is the focus.  The producer comes in, sees what's going on, and gives comments -- comments that the team has to follow invariably.  If these comments are: "man that sound sucks, I'll get us a better sound guy", then sound is going to get better.  If he says, "no, you need to focus more on the licensed content here" then that is what is going to get attention.  Attention is a finite resource.  A company that is more focused on creating an original product is almost always also one that is more focused on high production quality and original/fun gameplay.  In SWG they were focused far too much on Virtual Worldy features that didn't really work AND on the license and combat testing fell through the cracks.

Give me a licensed title and I'll tell you how I think the license probably hurt gameplay.


And I said this 8 months ago after I played a bit at E3.  Follow my link.  That was my point.  The bit about licenses and the development process was an addendum and a further discussion of this.  Again, had you not just been looking to snipe at me you might have found that we were coming from the same place.

Sorry, Gabe, but the bulk of your argument is just wrong. You're using the D&D license as a sort of crutch to carry your argument.

Using the license as an excuse for DDO being bad is just...sad.

I don't believe D&D is bad source material. I think there could be a good MMO based in FR or Planescape, or even an extra-niche game based in the Burning Sun world. But this would require a competant dev house.

Sorry, but Turbine doesn't fit the bill. DDO is not a good game, because Turbine did not make it so. It's no one else's fault but their own.

I'll make it easy for you, this is the comment that was my jumping off point:


You seem to want to agree with everything being said there, and then more or less agree with everything I've said after that, just not without changing it to your own terminology first and telling me I'm an idiot for not understanding your terms instead of mine.

Gabe.

Bold mine.  The bold is the part no one else agrees with.  The 3.5e d20 system would be fine for an online world, if the company building that world was any good at building worlds.  KoTOR, which everyone agrees was a good game, was built on the d20 system.  It's kinda hidden, and changed slightly for the setting, but it's more or less the d20 system.  The major difference is that Bioware knows how to make a world, has good artists to implement the concept art, decent story and dialog writers, quest designers, etc.  Everyone else's argument seems to be that it's not the license that caused Turbine to fail...  it was TURBINE.  They are indicating that if Blizzard, or Bioware, or any other maker of good games, had made 'D&D Online' using the Ebberon setting, it wouldn't have been constantly raining, all earthtones, with mediocre art, and missions more formulaic than CoH, with slightly gimicky, but not terribly improved, combat and a depressing lack of content.

Alkiera

EQ is based on D&D.  Diku was based on D&D.  Have we forgotten this?  Well -- tbh, hey actually expanded D&D a little bit whereas DDO is only trying to do the core ruleset.

KotOR is loosed basely on d20 and not licensed directly off of D&D 3.5e.  Not to mention that it was done by one of the few companies out there with enough clout to do things "their way".  I already mentioned that KotOR was an exceptional case to general trend of licenses and I applaud Bioware for that.

Edit: Also, KotOR and other D&D licensed titles that Bioware was involved with had the luxury of being singleplayer.  A singleplayer game can offer a tailored experience, akin to having a DM run the show.  An MMO can't.  As I was trying to convey, I think this is a big part of why the D&D to MMO transfer isn't that exciting.

Licenced games are more likely to be impulse buys, they also will eat into your budget and if you are not careful securing the license becomes more important than what you do with it.  Turbine have shown you can borrow additional funding just for having a popular license. 

Designing a fun game within a certain framework will restrict your options but if you are sensible the wording of your license will allow flexible implementation, Turbine forced their own restrictions by marketing the game as a faithful conversation of the PNP game.  That restricts what they can do for no good reason, it's not a faithful recreation of pnp as you start with 20 extra hit points/spell points, the patch notes show them bending/breaking rules just to fit a mmorpg, e.g. turn undead.

As Margalis said if you have a talented team you will make a talented product.  To use your quote above if there was a popular IP based on creating cheese sandwiches, someone somewhere could make an awesome game from it, possibly set in space with pink aliens.

To use your quote above if there was a popular IP based on creating cheese sandwiches, someone somewhere could make an awesome game from it, possibly set in space with pink aliens.

Rather depends.  Who's making it?  How much influence does the licensor have?  What context is the license being used for?  An MMO?  A singleplayer RPG?  A game for prizes?  How much budget is available?

I think that an important thing that is being lost here is that there is a large distance between could and would.  A talented design team, with a good budget, and a helping of creative freedom, working in a medium that was conducive to the license could make a good game -- I haven't ever been trying to deny that.  KotOR is a good example of this.  Whether the stars align so that this actually happens or not, is another matter entirely.  And if the game is poor, it could be because of any of those: the license didn't work well for the context, there wasn't enough budget, the licensor manhandled the project, ... or the people making it sucked.  More than likely it is a combination of several of those factors and more.

In DDO's case I suspect that the license wasn't that great for the medium of MMO's, that they did feel significant pressure to fulfill the "D&D experience", that their budget wasn't nearly WoW's and ... I'll pass on judgement of the dev team.  They could be bad, they could be good, I just don't know.  I saw enough problems there already though, that I didn't need to judge the dev team to predict that the final title would be fairly "meh".

I'm with Alkiera.  License has little to do with it.  DDO is as good a game as Turbine is capable of making.  They just aren't that good.

Yeah, I've pretty much said what I wanted to say, and that's the short version.

What license was responsible for AC2 again?

According to lots of leaks through the Vanguard testers, AC2 wasn't the fault of Turbine, they were out doing charity work or something when AC2 was developed.  AC2 was 100% Microsoft's fault. Turbine tried hundreds of times to resolve the design issues with Microsoft but being fairly new to software development, Microsoft didn't have a working email system plus their phone system was out and their address was wrong. Turbine designed a whole new phone system for them in a week!  Ungrateful bastards.  Microsoft then designed Turbine's new database for the account migration from Microsoft to Turbine, the result was to cancel 490% of the active accounts, that many users can't all have decided not to pay for a game they don't play anymore, something's fishy there.  Don't people know that one of main benefits of running a mmorpg is that you can continue to charge forgetful people for years for a service they no longer use?  They must be happy with it, or why would they continue to pay eh?

Things got even worse when Microsoft then used the personal information in the old database to track down and kill all the pets of the remaining customers who continued to play AC2.  Not many people know that. 

All I can say is it's lucky for Wizards of the Coast that they have been so supportive of Turbine and DDO, if any rumours start to leak about Wizards of the Coast being less than fawning towards Turbine, I for one am going to be shocked and horrified.

Why are you talking to Vanguard tester, you traitor commie terrorist.

commie is in the dictionary, nice!

What license was responsible for AC2 again?

Right, because this is an all or nothing proposition.  If licensing can hurt the development process then it is the only thing that can hurt the development process.

Look, I offered some reasons why I personally predicted that DDO would flop, and some ruminations on how licensing works.  It was not an attempt to condense the One True Downfall of DDO but just discuss Some issues of working with licensed property and the D&D license in particular.  I'm sorry if it didn't match your own personal theory.

Not Vanguard the game, Turbine had a set of "special" players called Vanguard who tested new content etc.  Fascist

I've got a theory - the less color there is in a game - the more shitty it seems.  No pun.

WoW > EQ2 > DDO

I like neat gross simplifications (no, I am not a US foreign policy analyst  :-D )

To further lighten up this thread:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/13

Which bodes wonderfully for LotRO or whatever it is called now.

I believe the consensus around here when they got both those licenses was 'Wow, who'd they have sex with to get those?  I can't imagine who thought they were a good enough dev team to really do either of those licenses justice'.

Alkiera

Two licensed fantasy MMORPGs coming out at about the same time where the license appeals to very overlapping audiences - brilliant! Talk about cannibalizing your own user base.

Whether or not there is a lot of room for a new fantasy MMORPG at all is question, let alone two from the same company with similar themes.

They would have been much better off choosing one license and making the game good than doubling the cost and effect to create two products that compete directly with each other.

LotrO justice?  What justice, the second some moron somewhere decided there would be no pvp and the game would take place during the timeline of the actual trilogy that game was doomed to the suck bin.  I dont care if Blizzard, Jesus and Tolkien himself were involved in designing the stupid thing.

St. Gabe is saying that the license was a major mitigating factor in the /meh-ness of DDO, not the only factor. He doesn't like tossing stones at dev teams, so he doesn't get into that. I have no such compunctions.

The DDO license (nor any other) didn't necessitate its mediocrity, it merely helped it because the main design goal was to make an absolutely faithful translation of the core 3.5 rules and nothing else. Part of the mediocrity has to be placed with the license, with the license not being conducive to an MMOG design, and with the zealous adherence to the license's rules over and above almost anything else.

It would have taken a star dev team to make it work. Most licensed games (or movies licensed from games or books or comic books) do not hold up to the quality of their original source because the transfer in medium creates significant barriers to the viewer/player.

KOTOR was not an MMOG, and would not have translated well as an MMOG without serious redesign. See Neverwinter Nights for a perfect example.

I still haven't figured out how Turbine got the licenses for DDO AND LOTR based on AC1 and AC2, unless they were the low bidder.

PSO worked fine. That was a subsciption game, and it didn't have many worldly elements. In fact much less even than DDO. You just meet in lobbies and then run quests, there is no town or anything like that.

It may not have been everyone's cup of tea, but it was fun for what it was. I was expecting DDO to be a lot like it but it but it isn't. PSO didn't do a lot but what it did do it did well - combat was simple yet fun, distance, aim and timing mattered, there were cool looking weapons and spells, characters looked neat, the landscapes were nice looking, the bosses were impressive. Although the quests used the same graphics over and over there were a variety of quests that could be unlocked - beat in a certain time, beat certain bosses, find certain items, etc. Even though 50 quests may have all taken place in the same basic caves area they at least felt different.

Well, I think that movie with Marlon Wayans showed how hard it is to get a D&D license these days.

See, its not reasonable to now narrow down the whole "more bad products from licenses than non-licenses" thing by saying "I meant MMOGs" because we haven't actually had enough MMOGs let alone MMOGs based on license to make a viable assesment. And of the MMOGs we've had so far, its really only fair to say that one sucks less than another, not that one is especially "good", particularly if by "good" we mean of the level of KotOR, Gran Turismo or Goldeneye 007 (surely some mistake).

The way this argument is going around in circles just so that people can claim "victory is mine" every other post is just like a Telefunken U47. With leather.

VICTORY IS MINE!




With leather, and whatnot.

That uses battleshout  :-D

He said in LEATHER

What happened in here ?

A barbarian Thief  8-)

Spank me.